Tuesday, December 18, 2012

The
U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) administers several permanently authorized programs
to help producers recover from natural disasters. Most of these programs offer
financial assistance to producers for a loss in the production of crops or
livestock. In addition to the production assistance programs, USDA also
has several permanent disaster assistance programs that help producers
repair damaged crop and forest land following natural disasters. These programs
offer financial and technical assistance to producers to repair, restore, and
mitigate damage on private land. These emergency agricultural land
assistance programs include the Emergency Conservation Program (ECP), the
Emergency Forest Restoration Program (EFRP), and the Emergency Watershed
Protection (EWP) program. In addition to these programs, USDA also has
flexibility in administering other programs that allow for support and repair
of damaged cropland in the event of an emergency.

Both ECP and EFRP are administered by USDA’s Farm Service Agency (FSA). ECP
assists landowners in restoring agricultural production damaged by natural
disaster. Participants are paid a percentage of the cost to restore the
land to a productive state. ECP is available only on private land and
eligibility is determined locally. EFRP was created to assist private forestland
owners to address damage caused by a natural disaster on nonindustrial
private forest land.

The EWP program and the EWP floodplain easement program are administered by
USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) and the U.S. Forest
Service (USFS). The EWP program assists sponsors, landowners, and
operators in implementing emergency recovery measures for runoff
retardation and erosion prevention to relieve imminent hazards to life and property
created by a natural disaster. In some cases this can include state and federal
land. The EWP floodplain easement program is a mitigation program that
pays for permanent easements on private land meant to safeguard lives and
property from future floods, drought, and the products of erosion.

Most of the emergency agricultural land assistance programs are funded through
supplemental appropriations, rather than annual appropriations. As a
result, funding for emergency agricultural land assistance varies greatly
from year to year. Agricultural land assistance programs do not usually
receive the level of attention that triggers a supplemental appropriation.
Therefore, funding is typically provided for these land assistance
programs as part of a larger supplemental appropriation that funds a
number of agencies and programs beyond agriculture. This irregular funding
method has left some agricultural land assistance programs without funding
during times of high request.

Recent restrictions placed on supplemental appropriations for disaster
assistance have changed the way the agricultural land assistance programs
allocate funding, potentially assisting fewer natural disasters. Language
in the Budget Control Act of 2011 (P.L. 112-25) limits emergency supplemental
funding for disaster relief. Specifically, funding used for disaster relief
must be used for activities carried out pursuant to the Robert T. Stafford
Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act (Stafford Act, P.L. 93-288)
for FY2012 through FY2021. This means funds appropriated through emergency
supplementals for disaster relief for these ten years may only apply to
activities with a Stafford Act designation. Since funding for agricultural land
disaster assistance programs is appropriated almost exclusively through
supplementals, this requirement could limit the way agricultural land
assistance programs work in the future, potentially assisting fewer
natural disaster events.

Date of Report: December 11, 2012
Number of Pages: 16Order Number: R42854Price: $29.95

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